O Dédalo E O labirinto: Caminhar, imaginar E educar A atenção

If you are educated to know too much about things, then there is a danger that you see your own knowledge and not the things themselves. Here I argue that walking offers an alternative model of education that, rather than instilling knowledge in to the minds of novices, leads them out into the world. I compare these alternatives to the difference between the maze and the labyrinth. The maze, which presents a series of choices but predetermines the moves predicated on each, puts all the emphasis on the traveller's intentions. In the labyrinth, by contrast, choice is not an issue, but holding to the trail calls for continual attention. Education along the lines of the labyrinth does not provide novices with standpoints or positions, but continually pulls them from any positions they might adopt. It is a practice of exposure. The attention required by such a practice is one that waits upon things, and that is present at their appearance. To 'appear things' is tantamount to their imagination, on the plane of immanent life. Human life is temporally stretched between imagination and perception, and education, in the original sense of the Greek scholè, fi lls the gap between them. I conclude that the 'poor pedagogy' provided by a mode of education that has no content to transmit, and no methods for doing so, nevertheless offers and understanding on the way to truth.